Welcome to The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption! Subscribe to my RSS feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss any chapters from my year-long blog-as-a-book experiment on why we choose to consume, or not.
Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’ is a brilliant movie adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book about the real-life (mis)adventures of Christopher McCandless.
I had been dying to watch ‘Into the Wild’ ever since I read about it in the April 2008 issue of David Report. So, I was delighted when GK brought over the DVD for our Saturday Night Movie Marathon session. It is such sweet serendipity that reaffirms my faith that the universe reaches out to give you whatever you ask for.
The movie itself is mind-blowing, especially in the context of my own experiment, and I went through an entire spectrum of emotions over its two and a half hour run.
Emile Hirsch is superb as Christopher, the idealistic, but troubled, twenty-something protagonist who, inspired by Tolstoy and Thoreau, decides to abandon his career and his family, give away his $24000 savings to charity and hitchhike to Alaska to live in the wilderness.
Christopher deals in extremes and evokes extreme reactions. It’s easier, therefore, to idolize him as enlightened or reject him as naive than to identify with him.
However, my first thought when I saw him was how similar we were — “Wow! That’s me!” — in our angst over our broken childhoods, our ennui with owning things, and our idealistic search for an alternative approach to happiness. I immediately got why someone like him (”us”) would want to leave a life of ease and search for something more.
Christopher spends the next two years on the road as an ‘aesthetic traveler’, chasing the next adrenalin rush (kayaking down the Grand Canyon into Mexico) and befriending an interesting assortment of hippies and loners, while sustaining himself by doing a variety of odd jobs (cooking fries in McDonald’s).
It is here that my sense of identification turned to awe — “Wow! That’s cool!” — at his physical and social ease, at the range of his experiences, at the extremes to which he goes in search of ‘ultimate freedom’. Like there’s no limit to owning things, there’s no limit to renouncing things, and, compared to the extremes to which he takes his renunciation, my own experiment felt woefully inadequate.
Once in Alaska, Christopher settles down into an abandoned school bus and spends his days exploring the territory, shooting small game, reading Thoreau, and recording his experiences in a journal. However, as days turn into months, loneliness sets in and he begins to tire of solitude, and long for human relationships. As he sets out to return, he realizes that he is trapped, as his path is blocked by a seasonal river. Weakened in body and spirit, Christopher dies; a few days later, his body is found by a hunting party.
For the most part, ‘Into the Wild’ is a story about the relentless pursuit of joy. In the end, it’s also a story about the futility of that pursuit, because, after we have traveled the whole world searching for joy, we realize that we have, in fact, left it behind. The catch is that unless we set out to search for it in the first place, we’ll never know that we already have it.
So, maybe, the key is to start with the premise that we already have whatever we need, and look inwards, and not outwards, as we search for joy.
That sounds a little like my own experiment.
Anyways, I have been listening to Eddie Vedder’s ‘Hard Sun’ non-stop for the last two days. Have a look and find out why –
Comments (14)
Gaurav: I’ve been following your experiment for quite sometime. Good luck with this.
On this article as such, as you say the catch is that -after we have traveled the whole world searching for joy, we realize that we have, in fact, left it behind - Well said. Few people realize it sooner than most.
@Joseph: Thanks for your kind words.
The catch is that you do need to travel the entire world to search for happiness, before you realize that you already have all that you need to feel it.
It’s a rites of passage everyone has to go through.
Pain is often a prerequisite for wisdom.
we are so scared of being left alone with our thoughts, cramming our days full of work and other pursuits that we rarely have the time to search inside us for what we crave, its more of an outward looking world..yep we need to slow down a bit and look inside..its a really insightful comment and now am eager to watch this movie! keep it coming!
Human life is really too short to travel the ground and the sea in search of the ultimate happiness. The pursuit of the unknown and its elements excites and unnerves all us. But a very few dare to do what the heart says. And they are not bothered whether the search will be fruitful or not. Even this ambigutiy becomes the driving force.
I am not sure I was able to express my the thought well..:-)
What is your age Gaurav, this kind of depth cannot come without an age! If any way I can contribute to your project. Please let me know.
Nishikant Bohra
Visiting Faculty( Marketing) & HR & Marketing Consultant
GREAT BRO, MY WHOLE PURPOSE OF GETTING THAT FILM TO YOU HAS BEEN FULFILLED, AFTER TRAVELLING THE WORLD MYSELF FROM 3YRS IN SWITZERLAND(EUROPE),USA(LOS ANGELES,FRISCO,NY) AND HARDCORE AFRICA (KENYA,MOMBASSA,KONZA,MASAI MARA,NAKURU), I FEEL YOUR ARTICLE IS WISE ENOUGH TO BE PUT UP AS A PORTRAIT, I AM PROUD OF YOU AND YOUR THOUGHTS,THEY WERE VERY REFLECTIVE !!!
YOURS
GK
G.K. sent me a link to this page. The responses to the film are great to read. Penn must be happy to have touched so many people’s hearts. What I took away from the film is slightly different from the above comments.
It is true to say that the journey may be pointless when happiness may lie around the corner. The search inward may be more important than the search outward. However I feel that the importance of the journey ought not be underestimated. For some their small town may have all that they desire. For others fulfillment may lie in the next village or across a vast ocean. This becomes especially apparent when one realizes his or her purpose. When that is realized, a journey is inevitable.
The much greater point for me, what the film underlines, is that regardless of the journey, happiness is found in human interaction. Human beings are social creatures. For us life is best spent sharing it with someone. This was the dying protagonist’s last expression. Whatever you do, wherever you go, fulfillment will be in friendship, acceptance, and love.
NICE HEARING FROM YOU JONATHAN, WRAPPING UP “FASHION” BY MAY END, ALSO MY SHORT FILM “THE OPPORTUNIST” GOT SELECTED IN THE CON-CAN FILM FESTIVAL.TOKYO,JAPAN IN THE COMPETITION SECTION JUST TODAY,WILL BE EMAILING YOU ,BRO !!!
NICE HEARING FROM YOU JONATHAN, WRAPPING UP “FASHION” BY MAY END, ALSO MY SHORT FILM “THE OPPORTUNIST” GOT SELECTED IN THE CON-CAN FILM FESTIVAL.TOKYO,JAPAN IN THE COMPETITION SECTION JUST TODAY,WILL BE EMAILING YOU ,BRO !!!
Hey Gaurav, hope all is well with you. You have been little inactive on the net.
Was hoping to see Weekend 5 of the movie run..:-)
hey…what happened?
It was tragic that McCandless died out there in the wilderness; but then again, so many people have benefited from his story… a couple of years of hitchhiking led to his story challenging thousands (millions?) of people to reexamine their lives
Very interesting… I’m surely going to keep an eye out for it and catch it. And yes, can so relate to the feeling myself. My status even reads “…wants to close out to worldly things and be with the hills for a while…” - so wow, great celestial timing!
@Rincy: Yes, we often use our possessions and our pursuits to hide from ourselves.
@Shashank: Yes, the important thing is to seek (happiness, love, truth etc.), even when you know that you may not find it after all.
@Nishikant: I’m 28, but I have been told that I’m already a boring old man.
@Jonathan: I think there’s a sequence we can’t escape. You first need to realize the futility of searching outside, then you need to realize the futility of searching within, only then you can truly find happiness in human interactions. This is the classic “dependent to independent to interdependent” process.
@GK: Thank you, my friend, both for the movie and for your kind words.
@Patrick: Yes, that’s true, but still, I feel sad about the pointlessness of his death.
@Kaushal: Maybe, we should head out into the Sahyadris together for a weekend. It’s too hot now, so, let’s do it towards the end of July, once the rains set in.
@Amit/Shashank: Well, I was struggling with the ghosts of self-doubt. I’m back now, in a manner.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks (2)
[…] While authenticity looks like a no-brainer for brands, few brands can be called authentic. It was another episode of Susan Bratton’s Dishy Mix podcast that helped me pin down the problem. It’s a great podcast and Joseph Pine, the author of ‘Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want’ sets the tone in the first few minutes by saying that all economic offerings are in-authentic because something is only authentic if it is one not ‘of man’. So, the The only way to live an authentic life is to live like Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ and go into the wild. […]
[…] you are free to indulge your wanderlust, to travel the world in search of meaning, maybe even walk into the wild, in the […]